But fair Oneida showed that war was in the land, removed though it might be from the great centres of recruiting operations. Joe Harris had noticed that a recruiting tent for McQuade's gallant Fourteenth stood in the middle of Genesee Street, only a little way above the hotels, with drums beating and flags and placards exhibited; and even in the fields she saw traces of the effort to answer the President's last demand for troops. Where on the visits of previous years she had seen only men toiling in the sunshine, many women were laboring now, and the change was significant. The homes of Oneida had already given of their best and bravest to the cause of the nation, and still the Moloch of war demanded more!—more, ever and continually more!
There was a reminder of the war, too, within the coach, and a reminder of the mode in which the recruiting service was being conducted. On one of the front seats sat a fine-looking young man, bright-eyed and keen-faced, in the shoddy uniform of a private. His conversation was at once that of a patriot and a gentleman; and it did not require many moments of unavoidable listening for the young girl to discover that he was well educated. Further conversation between himself and other passengers who seemed to know and respect him, showed that he had abandoned his studies in a leading institution, to answer the call of the country—that mathematics and military science had formed a considerable part of his studies—that he had had some hopes, when he enlisted, of obtaining the grade of a subaltern officer, when he should succeed in procuring sufficient enlistments—that by his personal efforts and fervid eloquence he had already succeeded in enlisting more than fifty men for the regiment with which he was connected, and was then on his way to another section of the county to make further efforts in the same direction—and that he was still a "full private," with a certainty of rising no higher, because he had neither money nor political influence to put him forward. So that this young patriot and soldier, who showed the power and energy of his nature in every glance of his eye and every word he spoke, was to be kept in the lowest position known to the service, and commanded by men who had never heard of a book on military science or tactics, a week before, but who could buy commissions or command a certain number of votes at a town-meeting! Josephine Harris had studied the current history of the time, enough to know and recognize the picture set before her, and to say, silently and between her set teeth:
"Oh, I wish I was only a man, to start out with a horsewhip and lash these incapables until they howled!"
Six o'clock, and the stage went rumbling and swaying into the little village of West Falls, which it is hoped that no matter-of-fact reader will attempt to find on the map of Oneida, albeit it has a veritable existence there under another name. It was a cozy little spot, nestled down into the valley of a small stream, half creek and half river, that formed a cataract in the neighborhood and gave it the name. Factories clustered along the stream, making the idle water labor for the benefit of man, and within them whirred the spindle of the cotton or wool spinner and clanked the hammer of the worker in iron and steel. The village itself lay partly in the valley, along the east margin of the stream, and partly climbing the slight range of hills that bounded it still farther eastward. A wilderness of shade-trees bordered the main street and seemed to cluster around every house on the narrow lanes that branched from it, presenting a cool and refreshing picture in the hot summer afternoon, and suggesting rosy-cheeked lasses, breezy halls and bed-rooms, real milk instead of the manufactured article, and all the other pleasant things traditionally supposed to belong to summer in the country.
Up the long shady street, then down a wide bye-street that branched to the left under the very edge of the hills, and the accommodating stage set the city girl down at the gate of a neat-looking story-and-a-half house, buried in trees and bowered in summer flowers, unvisited by her for the previous three years, but before that time the scene of many an hour of quiet rustic enjoyment. For reasons best known to herself, Josephine Harris had chosen not to advise her hostess of her intended visit, but she had no fears that it could possibly find her "not at home," and indeed before the clanking steps of the coach were well let down, the new-comer had been recognized from the house, and a young girl came flying down the pathway to the gate. This was Susan Halstead, her cousin, three years younger than herself, petite in figure, brown-haired and round-faced, with the curls flying loose over her shoulders and her childish mouth all puckered with pleasure at once more seeing and embracing "Cousin Joe."
The stage rolled away, the luggage found its way inside the white gate, and Josephine was soon in the arms of her matronly-looking Aunt Betsey, her mother's sister and the country type of the family as Mrs. Harris herself supplied that representing the city. Much taller in figure than her daughter, a little deaf and with many threads of silver shining in her dark hair, but with the kindest face and the merriest laugh in the world, Mrs. Betsey Halstead furnished a pleasant specimen of those moderately-circumstanced Lady Bountifuls of the country and the country village, who always have a spare bed for the wayfarer, always a cup of milk and a slice of fresh bread for the weak and the needy, and always an unalloyed enjoyment in the coming of "company," i.e., visitors.
It need scarcely be said that the coming of merry Joe was a pleasure, as well as a surprise, that she was overwhelmed with welcomes as well as questions, that aunt and cousin and the tidy "help" all vied in the effort to "put away her things," and that in five minutes the city girl was more pleasantly flustered than she would have been on entering a fashionable ball at Irving Hall or attending the first hop of the season at Newport. Pleasantly flustered—that is, she did not quite know whether her head was on or off her shoulders, and yet she knew that she was for the time in a quiet little haven of country rest from the noise and whirl of the great city, very pleasant to contemplate.
"And you did not write us a word about your coming?" said Aunt Betsey, interrogatively, when the bonnet had been laid off, the dust brushed away, and the second kiss of meeting exchanged.
"Not a word, Aunt," was the young girl's reply. "You know that I never do things like other people. I knew that you would be at home—knew that you would be glad to see me—did not know that I was coming, myself, until a day or two ago—and do not think that I should have written, if I had, when it was so much easier to bring the information myself."
"Still the same rattle-brain!" said Aunt Betsey, shaking her head with that peculiar gesture which really implies admiration of a prodigy. "So mother is still in the city, is she? Why did not she come along?"